Sony is one of the largest electronics makers in the world. The company is big in gaming, TVs, and computers among other categories and is working hard to bring next generation devices to market.

Sony bet big on OLED screens for TVs and was the first to bring an OLED set to market with its 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TV which debuted in late 2007. The XEL-1 was undeniably sexy, but it was small and had a price equating to about $1,744 USD when it debuted in Japan. Sony announced in November of 2007 that it would be bringing the XEL-1 to America. In early 2008, Sony announced that it was spending $200 billion on OLED manufacturing technology.

Today the OLED screens used in TVs are hard to mass produce and have high defective rates making them expensive to produce. Sony also now has competition in the OLED TV market from rival electronics firms. Sony announced this week that it is pulling the plug on its OLED TV in Japan. Sony cites sluggish demand as the main reason for stopping sales reports Reuters. Sony does plan to continue selling the XEL-1 in America and Europe.

OLED TVs promise significant improvements over LCD sets for users with less power consumption, thinner screens, and better image quality. The problem is that the screens are difficult to make and expensive to produce.

DisplaySearch analyst Hisakazu Torii said, "As flat panel TVs are getting bigger and cheaper, hurdles for OLED models have become higher, at least in the short term."

Sony will continue to sell the XEL-1 in Japan until its current supply runs out. A Sony spokesman said that the company intends to continue to consider new products and applications for OLED screens. Estimates have Sony selling only 2,000 OLED TVs in all of 2009.

The Financial Times reports that the reason Sony is removing the OLED set from the Japanese market is a regulatory change that meant the TV would have to be redesigned and with the low demand it wasn't feasible for Sony.

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Not really sure what exactly you're implying, but the quality difference between TN and IPS is in no way, shape or form "marginal". It's as clear as night and day, pretty much.

I had to trade down myself from a Dell IPS screen to a BenQ TN unit, and while I didn't see that big a difference at first, the limitations of TN grates more and more on me for each day that passes. The viewing angles are so crap with TN that the picture changes noticeably just by moving my head half a decimeter up or down or side to side, and low-light contrast is a nightmare. I'm playing through Morrowind again, and there's a lot of dank, dark caves in that game and I find myself squinting at shadows, trying to figure out if it's a rock or a badguy...

TN is utter shite, to be quite honest. This BenQ monitor was rather cheap, but it's still one of the worst purchases I've made these last couple years.

quote: Not really sure what exactly you're implying, but the quality difference between TN and IPS is in no way, shape or form "marginal". It's as clear as night and day, pretty much.

No it isn't. It's definitely one of those "I think it's better" kind of things for the vast majority of people...and for the vast majority of people, once you have either one in your home and therefore no longer side-by-side in the store, you have no chance of telling any difference.

I have a dell TN panel and an HP IPS side by side right now (both received a few months apart), and the dell has awful colors in comparison. Boosting saturation/digital vibrance just makes things worse. The viewing angles are also basically perfect on the IPS, while I notice issues on the dell even when staring straight at the monitor.

The color quality from a good IPS and a "good" TN is just night and day. The only thing TN has going for it is the cheap price and certain monitors with little/no input lag (viewsonics for example).

Sorry. It IS night and day. A good IPS panel is nirvana. Of course, Americans want big and cheap and that lends us to craptastic TN panels. I hope that things change and the manufacturers figure out how to make these OLED panels. I really don't want to wait 10 years.

It's not marginal. The image quality is substantially better. OLED pixels emit light directly, so they are brighter and can be seen from any viewing angle to nearly 90 degrees from normal. They have a response time 100 times faster. They do not require a backlight, so can be made far thinner and can be made on flexible substrates. When a pixel is off it emits zero light, so the contrast ratio is greater than a million to one and far superior to LCDs.

They are superior in every way, except they don't last nearly as long and are too hard to manufacture in large panels, making them way to expensive to be practical.

The difference in OLED side by side with an LCD (with a good source, of course) is night and day. All you need to do is to put a scene with high contrast on screen. The lcd won't be able to alter its backlight while the OLED handles the blacks flawlessly. The response time is also incredibly faster, which makes it leagues above LCDs for gaming.

I don't think the public wasn't willing to pay 2-5x the price. The issue was paying 2-5x the price for something so small.